*WARNINGS: (for my first attempt at) horror lab accidents, body mutilation, and severe...misuse of lab tools.*
Better Left Unsaid - Angst Day 2015
The moment Vlad put those ghost gauntlets into young Danny's sedated body, he could almost physically sense something wrong in the boy's core.
There was a constricted, closed-off feeling surrounding it, as if it was trying to pull away from the prongs clawing into Danny's humanity. It resisted as Vlad groped for it, fighting against any chance for him to get a finger-hold. Were it not for the gauntlets, he would have assumed it was his own core repelling the younger one.
But Vlad had to see this through, on Daniel's insistence. There had been no one around when he had become a halfa, no gauntlets to offer him the same chance for freedom from the pain. But he was now in the position to do it for someone else, someone who needed it much more than he ever did...
With a further, final reach, he finally grasped the boy's ghost core, and it writhed violently in response, almost making him jerk. He had to be extremely careful now, or more than Danny's ghost half could be taken from him.
Nevertheless, he couldn't stop himself from trembling from the resistance. He quickly looked away from the young Daniel he knew, strapped to an upright surgical table, and gave a hard yank out of his abdomen, stumbling backwards into open floor space.
The first thing that registered to Vlad's senses was the scent of burnt chlorine with a twist of spoiled tangy citrus: fresh ectoplasm. His eyes followed his nose to drops of the spectral matter on his shirt sleeves, which gave way to the larger neon-green slime trail dissolving into the floor leading back up to Danny. The ooze speckled his pant legs, finally leading up to a pool on his shirt, where it mixed with crimson along on two wide, open gashes. Vlad winced at the sight; against the boy's white shirt, the mixture looked like Christmas gone horribly wrong. He hadn't been careful enough.
Back in front of him at the end of his arms, there was even more ectoplasm drenching the ghost gauntlets that were now wedged in the separated Danny Phantom's gut. Vlad raised his eyebrows as he finally took stock of the ghost he was holding. Pure, raw, ripe power emanated from his aura like steam, and his core was screaming for its newfound freedom from his grip. Everything still looked like Phantom, but when Vlad caught sight of his eyes, everything that had made him good, a hero, was completely gone. All those human emotions had been hollowed out to leave an unrecognizable entity of sheer malevolence.
For a split second, all that could be heard was the steady, chilling beep of Danny's heart rate monitor above the rest of Vlad's lab equipment's perpetual hum. Only the swirling vortex of the ghost portal on the far wall seemed to offer any confirmation that time hadn't stopped.
And then, like a stoplight, the ghost's eyes flashed a luminescent green and everything jumpstarted back into motion. Phantom was very aware of what had just happened, and was ready to realize his full potential in strength. His fists clenched in anger at the still-intrusive gauntlets holding him up, and in one swift movement, he grabbed Vlad's wrists and tugged his hands out of him, the edges of the metal gloves catching on his skin and suit and ripping both open further.
Vlad was sent sprawling across the lab, the gloves being lost in the process. He let out a grunt of pain when his back collided with the wall and slid down to the floor. In the back of his mind he dully noted that the odor of ectoplasm and blood was somehow significantly stronger now that his surgeon's mask had slipped off his nose. But that thought was quickly replaced by a sickened feeling when he looked back up at Phantom.
There was a huge puddle of green goo beneath a wriggling tail, and right below the ghost's chest were two fist-sized gaping holes, with ectoplasm bubbling out of them at an alarming rate. Vlad could have sworn he saw a brief glimpse of the bluish ice core glowing within the exposed spectral matter. And yet, despite the mutilation, the most pain Phantom showed was a threatening grimace. And that grimace was staring right at Vlad.
Phantom saw the gauntlets on the ground and slipped two glowing hands into them, charging them with his own power before leaning back into the air, seemingly unbothered by his wounds. As he came back up, Vlad saw the cruelest, most vicious evil smile he'd only ever seen in a mirror.
And then that smile was three feet in front of him, reaching for him like a demon out of a nightmare. If Vlad didn't feel so caught off-guard, he would have at least turned intangible. But it was too late. Suddenly, his breathing hitched and his mind and body screeched out in the most excruciating agony he ever experienced. Phantom had grabbed for a clear hold of his shirt - no, him - and in doing so punctured his skin with the spiked prongs of the gauntlets. The claws tore through his muscles as they curled in and came back through to poke out of his chest, effectively giving the ghost a hold of three layers of Vlad - his apron straps, his shirt, and three inches of muscle tissue.
Vlad's eyes were burning from tears and the acidity in the air. He wanted to cry out, but he was cut off by jerky movements that wracked his nervous system as Phantom lifted him into the air, that torturous grin still on his face. With a careless rip he pulled Masters away from Plasmius, and Vlad wished he was sedated like Danny. Every single nerve of his was on fire as he felt his ghost core jostle free from its long-familiar home right beneath his heart. On a deeper level he felt a part of his identity leave him right along with the core - his imprint for Plasmius. Never mind the scraping along his ribcage as the gauntlets tore the two apart.
Ghost and human were thrown to either sides of the room. From his new vantage point, Vlad had a clear view of violent scene in front of him...along with the stream of red speckled with green that crawled up to his own feet and pointed out the numerous puncture holes and slash marks lining his chest. Across the way, he could see similar damage on Plasmius, only with inverted colors of body matter. Vlad had to cough back a gag reflex to keep himself from throwing up at the entire set-up, but he nearly passed out from pain as he did so and his eyes grew wide as he spat out blood onto his shirt. In a moment of horrific realization he knew his left lung had been grazed in the separation as well.
As it finally kicked in that Vlad was without his stronger alter ego, he began to feel extremely defenseless and vulnerable to Phantom's bidding. But the ghost seemed otherwise preoccupied as he set his sights on the unconscious Plasmius, as if he were his prey. He let the gauntlets fall to the ground and raced towards the older ghost, turning intangible in the process and overshadowing him. Or so Vlad thought.
He watched in both fear and awe as he saw his former other half wrench open his eyes to flash...green? It couldn't be possible, and yet it was happening right in front of him. The two ghost cores, one fire, one ice, were mixing, and Vlad could tell it was forced; he knew he had felt repulsion from the other core before. But somehow it stuck, and what surprised him more was how, at least appearance-wise, his and Danny's imprints were equally fusing together, creating what seemed like an entirely new ghost that combined his pure evil half with Danny's raw potential.
That pure evil seemed to be too much for the new youthful-looking ghost, however, which caused him to let out an agonizing scream as veins protruded out of his pale blue face and his hair began licking the air as a white flame. Without any powers to back him up, Vlad could only cower away from the sound, yet continue to watch in anticipation of what would happen next.
As the fusion settled, though, Vlad began to feel a sense of dread in his brain that compelled him to seek out a hiding spot. He scrambled as best as he could towards a nearby row of machines that controlled his portal, but about halfway there a muffled shriek made him turn back. It had come from Danny, who was still strapped to the metal table with the gas mask still on but had woken up due to the anesthesia wearing off. Vlad could very well imagine the boy's terror at the scene his eyes had opened to and the pain in his stomach, as if he had woken up mid-surgery, but there was nothing he could do now except continue to retreat breathlessly and hope for the best.
Apparently, the new fusion of Plasmius and Phantom had been in the action of going after Vlad when he heard his former human half cry out. He spun in the air and cackled ominously at the sight of his trapped victim. Floating down to his level, he turned the boy intangible and carelessly phased him through the straps and gas mask before shoving him to the floor.
Danny immediately hunched over himself as he tried to cover his wounds and cringed in his spot as the ghost hissed at him with blood-red eyes glowing menacingly. And then, once again, Phantom was picking up the gauntlets.
From his hiding spot, with a hand over the left side of his chest in a futile attempt to abate blood loss, Vlad noticed that the gauntlets' signal lights on the wrists were off, meaning that their basic power was deactivated. This explained why they hadn't just phased through his skin seamlessly to reach his core, since they did have Phantom's ectoplasmic charge at that point, but also why they tore holes into him. But with those activation lights off and no more ghost in Danny's body to remove, Vlad's worry skyrocketed over what the fusion's new motives were.
And what happened next, he would never be sure if it was the brainchild of the residual anger in Phantom or the domineering evil capabilities in Plasmius, but he simply wished it hadn't.
Danny's eyes stretched wide open as one of the gauntlets was shoved into the gashes Vlad had accidentally previously made and he yelped as he was raised into the air against the wall, gravity working the claws into his gut. With four swift flicks of the wrist the ghost restrained his limbs against the metal surface with neon ectoplasmic holds before finally pulling the gauntlet back out, with his fleshy insides exposed for all to see.
But in a second's passing, the prongs were right back to poking at his stomach, carving and slicing away mercilessly at skin and muscle until, at some point, Vlad could make out the crude outline of a mocking DP logo spewing out dark red liquid from cut seams, holes, and flaps of surface tissue. All during this time, Danny's screams had been ear-splitting, but eventually he began to mumble hysterical, freaking-out pleas and begging to stop as the ghost grabbed into his new creation and jerked out, twisting deliberately as he removed the chunks of Danny's squishy guts and organs.
Vlad had to look down for a minute to refrain from spitting up more blood and bile over what he was witnessing. He wanted to stop this madness right now, but he was sure his voice wouldn't work, and any physical movements beyond calculated cranes of his neck were out of the question.
When he brought his head back up, however, the unshakable nightmare had only gotten worse. Danny's mutilated body was sagging heavily against his constraints, each panting gasp seeming to pull him further down. But that terrified alertness returned instantaneously when he saw what Phantom had found: the portal's ecto-filtrator, ripped right off the wall. The cube by itself wasn't a remarkable size, but when shoved into the cavern beneath Danny's ribcage, its corners stretched and protruded noticeably through the patches of skin still left on the boy.
The ghost wasted no time in sealing the contraption in its intrusive position by bonding it to the edges of muscle fibers surrounding it with a thick circle of ectoplasm. Danny howled and howled away as he felt the substance burn and meld into his skin and insides, as if it was fire. Sweat poured down his face as he struggled and panicked at being so constricted. Vlad was astounded he was even still alive, much less still conscious.
All of the sudden though, and a moment too late, it finally dawned on him what the fusion's final plan was. Vlad's ecto-filtrator was about ninety percent full, and he had made a mental note to check up on it in a few weeks' time to replace it before it got out of control. But if it had a catalyst, the rate at which it became lethal made its current ectoplasm levels insignificant. And between Phantom and Plasmius, the ghost knew this.
With one final cruel smirk, Phantom began pulsating a massive plasma blast of energy into the machine, its wires overheating on contact and its ectoplasmic readings easily reaching volatile amounts. He was going to make Danny explode from the inside out.
Vlad shouldn't have done this, any of this. This definitely wasn't what Daniel had wanted, that was for sure. He could have been there for the boy, and talked him through it, no matter how much it hurt. After all, he, too, had lost his former best friend and the love of his life in the accident. They both could have worked through it together, but now...
"I'm sorry, Daniel," Vlad whispered in between stunted gasps as he saw the boy letting out nerve-wracking sobs of pain and terror over what was about to happen. Before he ducked down to brace himself as best he could for the shattering explosive destruction, he caught sight of the ghost zooming through the ceiling, his torture complete and sick satisfaction sprawled on his face.
As the sound of blasted concrete smashed his eardrums, the last thing Vlad remembered seeing was a drenched red sneaker.
So...Happy Belated Dan Phantom Day/Angst Day!
This fic kind of spawned out of both wanting to do a horror-type fic (I hope that's what you got out of it) and also a head canon about Dan's imprints that can be found in the original post of this fic on my Tumblr.
Also, there's now a standalone sequel to this! See chapter 6 of "Shots of Ectoplasm" for "Change of Plans."
Original scene idea belongs to Butch Hartman. I just beat it up and put in my two cents on what fully happened when Dan was created. :P